Time for the obligatory screenshot. Figure 2 shows the default Fedora desktop running Mozilla and Evolution.

In all, Test 3's look and feel isn't much different from previous versions. What impressed me the most was the noticeable improvement in desktop responsiveness, thanks to the the preemptible kernel and the new O(1) kernel scheduler. Another noticeable change was that the names of Fedora's configuration utilities have changed. The initial name component "redhat-" has been replaced with "system-". So, for example, redhat-config-printer has been renamed system-config-printer.

As usual, packages have been removed and others added. For example, the cipe package was removed because it wasn't supported by the 2.6 kernel; Netware support (in mars-nwe) has been removed completely. On the other side, added packages include XFCE4 and its associated utilities; a rich set of packages supporting Jakarta Commons, a collection of reusable Java components; and PERL-XML modules.

The release notes, available during the installation and on the installed system (/usr/share/doc/fedora-release-1.92/RELEASE-NOTES-x86-en.html), detail all of the added and removed packages.

Next: Impressions »